home automation

Some Black Friday ago, I happened to buy a lifetime subscription to Getflix. It’s a service that allows you to bypass Netflix regional restrictions by using their DNS servers. The advantage is that you don’t get stuck with lower speeds as you probably would with a VPN. The service has been working pretty well apart from a few outages some time ago (looks like Netflix is actively working against them) and I use it to watch US Netflix and Prime Video from Italy. I think there are other similar services so this guide will apply to those too.

When I’m on my PC, I use DNS Jumper to switch between Google and Getflix DNS servers. However, when I wanted to watch US Netflix on my LG TV I had to manually change the network configuration, not very comfortable with a remote. I couldn’t either leave the Getflix DNS always configured, as my family wouldn’t want to have English-only flicks nor lose some Italian-only movies Netflix probably offers.

The solution was to use my Raspberry Pi as a DNS server, point the TV to it and integrate a script into Home Assistant so I could manage the whole thing from my phone together with other lights and switches in my house.